A St. Augustine family said what should’ve been a fun experience of fostering a dog, turned into a costly headache.
That’s because the dog they were looking after named Kevin attacked another dog in their neighborhood. Leading them to pay a nearly $500 vet bill.
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“We were outside on the leash for the walk, which we had done several times prior and he just took off running after another dog and chased him down the road,” Nicole Smith-Williams, who was fostering Kevin, said. “Latched onto his neck, bit him. That poor dog required stitches.”
Smith-Williams said it required four people to remove Kevin from the other dog.
She said Safe Animal Shelter in Middleburg, where she got the foster dog, never told her Kevin was aggressive.
So, on Dec. 5, about a day after picking him up from the shelter, she returned him.
When she returned the animal, she asked a person in management if she could get reimbursed for the vet bill.
Smith-Williams said she was told because of the contract she signed, that would not happen.
Later in the day on Dec. 5, she was searching the shelter’s website to find anything to dispute what she was told.
While on the website, she said she was shocked to see the dog she’d just returned posted in the adoptions section, and with a paragraph that included a sentence describing Kevin as “big ol lover boy.”
The screenshot she provided News4JAX showed the dog was on the website Dec. 5 at 3:15 pm.
In another screenshot she provided, it showed Kevin was still on the website Dec. 6.
“At first I was like that’s my picture because I took the picture of the dog in front of my Christmas tree and sent it to them,” Smith-Williams said. “I was very concerned, very worried that anyone could go get this dog right now with no knowledge of what he did 12 hours ago.”
When News4JAX checked on Dec. 8, Kevin was no longer listed on the site.
And after this experience, Smith-Williams said she doesn’t want to deter people from fostering dogs, she just wants people to be careful.
“Use caution and be very careful when you’re adopting or fostering from a shelter,” Smith-Williams said. “Do your due diligence.”
She said this may look like asking as many questions as possible about what the dog you may be bringing into your house, is like.
Smith-Williams said she is still hoping to get reimbursed for the vet bill. She has attorneys looking over the form she signed and she is speaking to the shelter’s attorney.
News4JAX reached out to Safe Animal Shelter in Middleburg, for comment. A worker we spoke with by phone said they could not comment.